On 29.06.2010 14:46, Jason Self wrote:
> Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote
>> Please note that the M2A-VM has a soldered flash chip, and you will have
>> to desolder it (or perform some top hat flash or in circuit flashing
>> trickery) before you can try coreboot. The flash chip is LPC with PLCC32
>> form factor, and desoldering a 32-pin chip scares many people.
>>>> Indeed; I've never soldered/desoldered anything in my life. I thought
> that Flashrom was used to get Coreboot onto the board. I clearly
> misunderstand the purpose of Flashrom if physical modification is also
>
No, flashrom works fine on the M2A-VM. The problem is that if your
coreboot image is broken, you need to recover. Usually the first attempt
at building coreboot image won't boot, and then you are stuck. You now
need a way to reflash the chip with an external programmer or another
board or you have to override the onboard chip.
External programmers are expensive, and they usually can't flash a chip
which is soldered to a mainboard.
Programming the flash chip in another board is only possible if you
desolder it.
Overriding the flash chip with another known working chip can only be
done with top hat flash on the M2A-VM and I don't know if the board
survives top hat flash.
> needed. If that's specific to the M2A-VM perhaps I should look for a
> different Micro ATX board with which I can use Flashrom. Suggestions?
>
AFAIK flashrom works on all coreboot-supported boards. However, if a
machine doesn't boot, you can't run flashrom on it. For that, you need
an easy way to boot from a working flash chip, and if your flash chip is
socketed, this is really simple: Plug in another chip, done.
Regards,
Carl-Daniel
--
http://www.hailfinger.org/